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Warsaw Book Night

Only in the mood for Reading! One time only in Warszawa (Warsaw)! Only on 28th September during 'Book(store) Night' Film screening of Judith Fibigers' "Political Dress"! You are invited to the screening of Judith Fibigers' "Political Dress" at 19.00hrs! A sensational documentary showing the political and social importance of fashion. Clothing can be used as an instrument of rebellion, reflecting or opposing current trends; it can also signify allegiance to a specifically identifiable group. Whether we want it or not - our choice of fashion always says something about us. This film presents the history of clothes in the Polish People's Republic: how difficult it was to source them, how fashionable people were treated and how uniquely Polish women looked at the time. Those sharing their memories of the socialist period include Barbara Hoff, Janusz Głowacki, Andrzej Wajda, Ania Kuczyńska, Mirosław Pęczak, Tomek Lipiński, Kora and Wilhelm Sasnal. Following the screening there will be a 'meet and greet' with the films' director - Judyta Fibiger. The topic under discussion will be fashion and its various links. The director is also the author of the book "Barbra Hulanicki. Only tomorrow is important". Attendees will also be given the opportunity to comment on and discuss the forthcoming documentary film about Barbara entitled "My Big Biba".

The Queen of Biba

Barbara Hulanicki has got footwear on the brain. "I'm dying to do a girls' sneaker brand, golly!" she announces over the phone from her studio in Miami. The 82-year-old fashion, retail and design legend who famously, along with her husband, Stephen Fitz-Simon, founded Biba, the store and brand that all but defined swinging London in the '60s and '70s, still has an eye for what the younger generation needs... perhaps even before they do. In this instance she calculates that with the saturation of sneakerhead culture and Supreme drop delirium, the girls may be getting the short shrift: "I think they're forgetting the other lot!" For the Polish-born Hulanicki, it was just this kind of intuition about the unmet fashion needs of young women that led her and the late Fitz-Simon to start Biba as a mail order business in 1964. Their first pattern, modeled on a pink gingham dress popularized by Brigitte Bardot, was an instant hit, selling 11,000 units based off of one picture in London's Daily Mirror. After a childhood in Jerusalem where her father was a diplomat, her family moved to the UK, where Hulanicki was exposed to the bourgeois fashion tastes of wealthy English relatives like her aunt Sophie. That, along with stints as a fashion illustrator for magazines covering the couture shows, comprised the entirety of her background in fashion before she started her seminal line and boutiques. But her background proved less crucial than her instinct, which, in the '60s, centered around the idea that a generation of "war babies" was desperate to reject the stuffiness of British fashion still bound up in Victorian rule-following. And so, after the wild success of that gingham dress, Hulanicki and Fitz-Simon set up their first shop in Kensington's Abingdon Road in September of 1964 and sold out on their first day. The iconic Biba dolly dress was born. In the 11-year reign of Biba, which grew to encompass four successive shops in London and one briefly in Brighton, the locations were less "stores" and more "happenings," existing as the platonic ideal and living manifestation of the liberation and experimentation going on in fashion and culture in the British capital. Twiggy, Bowie and Yoko were regulars, and Freddie Mercury met his girlfriend and partner Mary Austin while she was a shopgirl there. "[Freddie] was so very clever. He told me to get the roof garden [at the final Biba store] restricted so nobody could touch it. He was really thinking," Hulanicki recalls. The garden still stands today. There's another name you may recognize who got her start at Biba: None other than a teenage Anna Wintour had a stint at the second Biba on Kensington Church Street. "She was great and very quiet, terribly quiet. She worked in the changing room, poor thing," Hulanicki recalls. When the brand shuttered in 1975 after disagreements with investors, Hulanicki and her family, which now included a son, Witold, decamped to Brazil. She describes an episode where, in an effort to rid herself of the weight (physical and spiritual) of her Biba past, she dumped her whole archive onto the street, never to be seen again. After seeing vintage Biba pieces fetch prices in the thousands on sites like The RealReal today, she wishes she had kept maybe a few, but generally prefers to "look at [Biba] from a distance." Today, Hulanicki is living out a high-octane second (third and fourth) act as one of the most in-demand interior designers and fashion consultants from her home base in Miami. Her work with Chris Blackwell on hotels like The Marlin and The Tides in South Beach defined the area's renaissance in the '90s with their sensual, Art Deco look. For PAPER's Spring issue, she styled singer/songwriter Austin Mahone as a Generation Z version of Mick Jagger, one of her Biba contemporaries. "Austin was absolutely terrific. He's got a long career 'head of him," she predicts. And after six decades in fashion and design, with no sign of stopping, Barbara Hulanicki, the Queen of Biba and beyond, knows a thing or two about longevity.

My Haven (2018) Key :

Barbara Hulanicki, 81, has lived in her Miami loft for 19 years, here she reveals the items of personal significance and the inspiration behind the interior design
1, MIAMI NICE
This loft has been my home for 19 years. My husband and business partner Stephen and I came to Miami in 1987 when Ronnie Wood asked us to design the interiors of a hotel he'd bought.
2. JUST IN BIBA
My aunt called the Biba store in Kensington, which we opened in 1964, 'Barbara's junk shop' and the first thing I sold was a gingham dress for a ha'penny. Our aim was to sell affordable fashion – but today those dresses sell on eBay for £900! They loved us in Japan too and I later brought out a children's range there called Minirock.
It tickles me pink to see this copy of my autobiography, translated into Japanese.
3. MODEL ACT
Twiggy was a regular customer at Biba, and my favourite, even though people like the late David Bowie and Mick Jagger were among my clientele. She was so natural.
She's still a friend, as is her daughter Carly, who's a fabric designer.
Twiggy embodied the spirit of the 60s and Biba, as this classic image chosen to grace the cover of Swindle magazine's Icons issue shows.
4. GONE TOO SOON
My favourite photo of my father Witold is this one of him in his den in Jerusalem. He was a Polish diplomat helping to mediate the partition of Palestine in 1947 and we'd sit in that den and he'd tell me of his life in Poland.
There were lots of Polish children in Jerusalem who'd come from Siberian camps and I used to feel bad because my life was so happy.
Then my dad was shot by Zionist extremists in 1948 when I was 12 – my mother never got over it and we moved to Brighton to live with an aunt.
5. MADE IN ENGLAND
Prince Charles presented me with my OBE in 2012. They give you so many instructions about how to walk, turn and curtsey that I got confused.
The prince couldn't stop laughing and said, 'Get on with it!' He was a hoot! I felt very proud – when I came to Britain there weren't many foreigners.
England was strange after our hippy-dippy life in Palestine, then I went to a school that was like St Trinian's and I had a ball.
6. FAMOUS FRIENDS
This daisy metal chair is the first sample of one I made for pop singer Gloria Estefan here in Miami when I designed her home and recording studio.
I like doing work for others because when you make things for yourself there are no restrictions and that can be frightening.
I've met loads of famous people, from Debbie Harry to Brigitte Bardot, who both used to come to Biba, and living here, I've met U2, Madonna and the Spice Girls.
As told to Sarah Chalmers. Barbara's artwork is available at illustrations-by-barbara-hulanicki

From: Femail (Daily Mail)

By Alexandria Dale For The Daily Mail. Published: 14th November 2018 | Updated: 15th November 2018.
Biba summed up the look and vibe of the Sixties, and the brand is as cool as ever thanks to a relaunch in 2009.
Biba fashion was founded in 1963 by Barbara Hulanicki and Stephen Fitz-Simon
Husband and wife duo soon opened department store in Kensington, London
Brand closed in 1976, but successfully relaunched with House of Fraser in 2009. If one label summed up the look and vibe of the Sixties, it was surely Biba.
Founded in 1963 by husband and wife Barbara Hulanicki and Stephen Fitz-Simon, the brand started out as a mail order company. They soon graduated to a small shop and, in 1965, upgraded to a large department store in Kensington, West London.
A mix of Art Nouveau decor and rock 'n' roll decadence, it was more than a retail space — it was the hippest hangout in town.
'The louder the music played, the faster the girls moved and more people appeared in the shop,' recalled Hulanicki, whose brown pinstripe dresses, glittery skirts and fitted clothing in earthy colours sold like hot cakes.
But the good times couldn't last for ever and, in 1976, the store closed.
It wasn't until November 2009 that the brand was successfully relaunched at House of Fraser, beginning with fashion and then adding accessories and interiors lines.
Since then, the collections have been sell-outs, with many designs reminiscent of that iconic original Sixties glamour.

From: Amazon .co.uk

Barbara Hulanicki was the creator of the iconic BIBA fashion label which captured the imagination of a generation and gained cult status in 'Swinging London' in the '60s and '70s. Barbara started her career as a fashion illustrator working for magazines and newspapers from Vogue to the Daily Mirror, so who could be better placed to create a fashion workbook? Barbara Hulanicki's Fashion Illustration Workbook is great fun for everybody - from young children and students, to those who remember the period with such affection. Create whatever you want with this innovative book, copy the work of a brilliant artist, design your own hats, make up or hair fashion; colour in the dresses of various models in an array of colourways or create your own BIBA inspired prints.

From : Barnes & Noble

The heart of Swingin’ London in the 1960s was fashion—and at the heart of that fashion scene was Barbara Hulanicki’s BIBA label. The day she opened her first store, in Kensington, she sold her entire stock within an hour, and the excitement only built from there. By 1973, BIBA had a whole department store, and its tights cuts, skinny sleeves, and earth tones were the essence of fashionable women’s wear. This book harks back to Hulanicki’s beginnings as a fashion illustrator, offering readers a chance to draw on her ideas and images to make their own fashion creations. Whether it’s colouring a dress outline, designing a hat from scratch, or assembling a BIBA-style print, the activities on offer in this workbook are sure to inspire any budding fashion designer or nostalgic fan of the Swingin’ Sixties.

From: Encyclopedia .com

In the decade from 1964 to 1974, Barbara Hulanicki's design and entrepreneurial skills contributed to the development of an entirely new ethos in British fashion that responded to ideas generated by the rising youth culture of the period. Hulanicki and her husband, Stephen Fitz-Simon, created a series of fashion businesses, under the name of Biba, perfectly suited to the spirit of change and adventure characterizing the Mod movement originating in London during the early 1960s. Unlike the English establishment rag trade, Hulanicki understood that fashion ideas would, henceforth, originate in the streets of British cities, rather than in couture houses across the Channel. She styled her shop as a meeting spot and a place of entertainment for those interested in a lifestyle represented by the clothes and other goods designed by Hulanicki. Following a year at art school, Hulanicki set up Biba's Postal Boutique in the early 1960s, with herself as designer and Fitz-Simon as business manager. The success of their business was ensured when an early design for a simple smock dress was worn by Cathy McGowan, "Queen of the Mods," on the popular television program Ready, Steady, Go. The first Biba shop was opened in 1964 in a small, old-fashioned chemist's shop on a corner of Abingdon Road, Kensington, London. Hulanicki concentrated on generating a unique atmosphere through décor, music, and the glamor of the young shop assistants—all of which turned her shop into an instant "scene," a gathering place for a hip, young clientéle who knew where to go for the latest ideas in clothing, without even the benefit of a sign over the shop-front. Hulanicki's early clothes were short, simple dresses, the "Biba smock," which became the uniform for an era. Her little girl look was given a major boost when Julie Christie selected her wardrobe for the film Darling from the Biba shop. Other early customers included Sonny and Cher, Twiggy, and Mick Jagger. The typical Biba dolly girl would have a slim, boyish figure, huge eyes and a childlike pout, updating the Audrey Hepburn gamine look of the 1950s. She would wear a simple mini dress selected from a wide range of muted colors—blueberry, rust, plum—which Hulanicki called Auntie colors, as they had previously been associated with the wardrobes of old ladies. At this time, she also introduced the first fashion t-shirts, distinguished from their ordinary equivalent by the range of Auntie colors in which they were dyed. The t-shirts initiated the unisex appeal of Biba goods. In 1966 the shop moved to larger premises in Kensington Church Street. The new boutique sported a black and gold art nouveau logo and was decorated in an eclectic mix of late 19th-century decadent motifs, Victoriana, and art deco. Hulanicki expanded her range of clothing to include fashion accessories, including bangles and feather boas displayed on old-fashioned bentwood hatstands, cosmetics, menswear, and household accessories. The Church Street Biba became an internationally known symbol of swinging London in the mid-1960s. In the early 1970s, the Biba style developed in the direction of retro glamor and glitter. Hulanicki introduced a line of children's clothing that followed the styles and colors of the adult ranges. She featured items such as straw hats with veils and artificial flowers, velvet, and lace, all enhanced by a new element of innocent eroticism and unchildlike glamor. Her cosmetics had, by the late 1960s, become big business, the range of colors corresponding to the Auntie colors of her clothing and including bizarre hues such as blue, green, purple, and black lipstick, eye shadow and powder. Rapidly increasing sales forced Biba to move again, in 1969, to a larger shop in Kensington High Street, where art nouveau and art deco fused into a single style that became Biba's own. During the early 1970s, Hulanicki and Fitz-Simon expanded their operations to the U.S. through New York's Bergdorf Goodman, which set up a Biba boutique in its flagship store. The final phase of expansion came in 1973, when Hulanicki opened the Biba department store in the former Derry and Toms premises in Kensington High Street, London. This enormous art deco building housed a huge enterprise that provided a complete setting, including an all-day restaurant and nightly entertainment in the glamorous Rainbow Room, exotic roof gardens, and a kasbah for the elegant and exotic retro style clothes, all designed by Hulanicki. The Biba store was, for a short time, a mecca for fashionable young Londoners looking for a setting in which to parade the elegant and eclectic clothing of the period. Management difficulties forced Hulanicki to leave Biba in the mid-1970s. She eventually moved to Brazil and thence to Florida, where she began to design under the Hulanicki name. Her ground breaking designs in the 1960s and 1970s were showcased in an exhibition entitled "Biba, the Label, the Lifestyle, the Look," which opened in 1993 at the Laing Gallery in Newcastle and later traveled to the Aberdeen Art Gallery. In the 1990s, Hulanicki turned to interior design, using bold colors to revitalize hotels in Miami's South Beach and the Caribbean. She drew both praise and criticism for her wild combinations that splashed together dozens of hues in buildings, including the Pink Sands Hotel and Compass Point in the Bahamas and the Leslie in Miami. She won an award from the Miami Design Preservation League for her redesign of the Marlin Hotel. Later, the same group blasted her color choices for other projects. "Barbara was at the forefront of changing the local colors from pastel to bright," Michael D. Kinerk, chairman of the Miami Design Preservation League, told Lucie Young of the New York Times. "It is the position of the league that the Art Deco district's colors should now swing back to more historically appropriate ones." Young quoted Miami photographer Steven Brooke as observing that "the colors [Hulanicki] uses might be legal but they are egregiously ugly." Hulanicki took the criticisms in stride, noting that similar critiques had been leveled at her early fashions, which in the end revolutionized fashion. "It's about energy," she told Young. "It has the same effect on babies and adults: it makes our minds tick." (Shame it ends here - most of Barbara's 21st century story continues in the main body of this page.

2016

Biba Founder Barbara Hulanicki Launches New Handbag Collection from houseofcoco.net Here at House of Coco we’re not quite old enough to have been around when Biba first launched, but it’s a brand we have always admired. Now, Barbara Hulanicki, the ground breaking designer that transformed the fashion industry and defined an era, is back with her first handbag collection in over 10 years. The Barbara Hulanicki collection, from the acclaimed fashion designer behind Biba, includes three distinctive designs that reflect her iconic sense of style. Fashion and function may be at the core to each eye-catching piece but her bold new collection is still full of surprises. Inspired by the designer’s own lifestyle, the playful and practical Kensington cross body handbag in Italian leather is the ideal travel accessory. In black and burnt orange leather with a sheer finish, the Kensington emulates all the warmth of an exotic holiday before even stepping on a plane. A handy front pocket neatly fits a passport while the interior has ample space for all other travel essentials. Lightweight, a wide two-tone cross body strap provides added comfort and a pop of colour. Wider at the base than the top, this unusual shape lends itself to the cross body streamlined style.  A zip top closure and a zipped pocket provide added piece of mind while the bright red interior is a gentle reminder that fashion should always be fun. The London carry-all tote is anything but your typical everyday bag. In dynamic metallic and created from heavy grain soft leather, this arm-candy will release your inner rock goddess. With a capacious zipped compartment and a handy detachable coin purse, it’s practical too. The West End clutch provides the ultimate in day to night glamour. In grainy soft Italian leather, it boasts striking bold metallic detail and a bright red interior lining. A detachable wristlet and cross body strap provides added versatility to this neat and chic box clutch. Every handbag comes with a print of Barbara Hulanicki’s artwork for that design.

Biography from Encyclopedia .com

Born: Warsaw, Poland, 8 December 1936; raised in Palestine, immigrated to England in 1948. Education: Studied fashion and fashion illustration at Brighton College, 1954-56; winner in the Evening Standard Design Competition, beachwear division, 1955. Family: Married Stephen Fitz-Simon, 1961 (deceased); children: Witold. Career: Illustrator for Helen Jardine Artists, London, circa 1956-59; freelance fashion illustrator, 1961-64; opened Biba's Postal Boutique, 1963; established first Biba emporium, Abingdon Road, London, 1964; moved and expanded to Church Street, London, 1965; opened branch location in Brighton, 1966; launched mail order catalogue, 1968; moved Biba to High Street, Kensington, London, 1969; introduced line of Biba cosmetics, 1969; cosmetics distributed nationally through Dorothy Perkins shops, 1969; introduced line of footwear, 1969; majority stake in company sold to consortium of investors, 1969; Biba boutique established at Bergdorf Goodman, New York, 1970; purchased Derry and Toms Department Store for "Big Biba," 1972; control of firm passed to British Land, 1972; Big Biba opened, 1973 (closed, 1975); firm declared bankruptcy, 1976; designed in Brazil, 1976-80; relocated to Miami Beach, Florida, 1987; designer of hotel and club interiors, videos, ready-to-wear children's clothes, theatre costumes, from 1988. Exhibitions: Retrospective, Newarke Houses Museum, Leicester, England, 1993. Awards: Bath Museum of Costume Dress of the Year award, 1972; Miami Design Preservation League award, for her redesign of the Marlin Hotel, Miami, Florida. Address: 1300 Collins Avenue, Suite 205, Miami Beach, FL 35139, USA.

Super Models: Meet the brothers who have made plaster casting cool 

ROBERT AND GAVIN PAISLEY’S architectural models have earned a cult following. Leading architect Alex Michaelis of Michaelis Boyd owns several, as does the New York veteran modernist Richard Meier. Each model is a precise replica of a real building, whether it’s a landmark like Battersea Power Station– their bestseller – or a private home. These aren’t just for design buffs, though. They possess the Lilliputian charm of a doll’s house, which holds universal appeal, as their rising popularity–70 per cent year-on-year increase in sales since 2014 – proves. It was the seemingly limitless potential of 3D printing that spurred the brothers to swap their computer-programming business in Nutley, East Sussex, for model making in 2011. At first they experimented with using purely digital technology to create the models, but they soon decided against it. "Although 3D printing is expensive, the results didn’t feel expensive and the models lacked that luxury craft touch," recalls Gavin. After taking a plaster mould-making course, they settled on a combination of analogue and digital to create the models, as encapsulated by their brand name, Chisel&Mouse – chisel for the handcrafted and mouse for the computerised. To begin making a new model, they draw up the building from photographs using SketchUp 3D-modelling software. "It’s really important that the reproductions are exact, we’re not trying to do an abstraction," says Gavin. One of the ways he achieves this is by counting the bricks alongside the window panes to ensure the proportions are correct. Next, the rendered computer-based models are sent off to be 3Dprinted (this is too costly to do in-house) and the 3D model they receive is used to produce a rubber mould. This is then checked for precision and, after correcting any errors, the process is repeated and a second rubber mould is created. This will be the master, used to cast the model. Casts are made using a type of plaster called jesmonite because it’s very strong. "It has a lot of resin and acrylic in it, which can take a bit of battering," explains Gavin. Finished by hand, the models require light sanding and any surplus protrusions are chiselled off. Metalwork for windows and doors is made in Scotland and fitted by Robert and Gavin in their Sussex studio. Developing a new model can take a few months, but Gavin has been working on his favourite London building for two years. He hopes his ambitious 24in-tall model of Christchurch Spitalfields, Hawksmoor's 18th-century church in east London, cut away at the back to reveal the interior, will be finished next year.

From: sun-sentinel

Hulanicki, raised in England, was a former fashion illustrator who gained fame with the legendary BIBA. Starting as a mail-order boutique, the London emporium became a major trendsetter in the `60s.After moving to South Beach in 1987, Hulanicki designed interiors for Woody`s, a pink neon nightclub owned by Rolling Stones guitarist Ron Wood, and Sempers, a bordello-looking nightclub in the Waldorf Hotel, both on the beach. Blackwell asked her to make over the restaurant in the style of a typical Jamaican ``dive.`` Hulanicki, who had never been to Jamaica, recalls that at first the assignment perplexed her. But she gamely pushed ahead, locating the restaurant at the lowest level, where the lobby had already been dug out. She kept the lighting dim, capitalized on primary colors painted on old picture frames and had all of the carpentry made crooked. One level above, Hulanicki created the bar and an open, flowing lobby sporting an ocean theme. Where support columns remained at a walkway, she added faux columns for continuity. She designed iron chairs that look like jelly fish, suede love seats in sea colors to resemble waves, and sea-shell sconces.

My Leafy Sanctuary

'I have lived in a Art Deco apartment block by Miami Beach for more than 20 years. I live in one apartment and my office is in another one so there's no commuting. It's only one road away from the beach, which really helps too!I have a very nice 100 ft terrace. But every time I get the plants going there is a huge hurricane. Out lives are governed by these horrible hurricanes every year. The season lasts for three months and my plants have to be really well grounded. I choose plants that survive wind and the treacherous sun on the terrace, which means anything with big, dark leaves, such as philodendrons and coconut palm trees. I talk to my plants id they're not behaving themselves!
When I visit friends' houses in England, I think how nice it would be to build a large garden. I have green fingers - well I did! Years ago, Biba had the Kensington Roof Gardens - which is famous for its resident flamingos.
It was amazing up there and we had plenty of parties, We inherited a lot of plants in the roof garden that had been there since the 1930s, as well as a gardener who was quite old, but he knew where everything was. I loved planting things there that looked pretty but were not obviously compatible.
Then I decided to replace the flamingoes with penguins! We rented two dozen of them but they really didn't like it up there. Their water wasn;t clean enough and they were very angry. One day the head penguin decided he had had enough and led all the others down the back stairs into the restaurant on the floor below! In the end they had to call someone to take them away and we replaced them with flamingos again.'

Desert Island Discs Playlist

Seriously? It's amazing what can be found on-line - here is the playlist page from the BBC (in full)
1. 'Baby Love' by Diana Ross and the Supremes
2. 'Begin the Beguine' by Artie Shaw
3. 'Polonaise in A Flat Minor' by Frédéric Chopin
4. 'Such a Night by Johnnie Ray
5. 'La Vie en Rose' by Marlene Dietrich
6. 'Girl from Ipanema' by Astrud Gilberto (Castaway's Favourite)
7. 'One Love/People Get Ready' by Bob Marley and the Wailers
8. 'Walk on the Wild Side' by Lou Reed
Book - Roget's Thesaurus
Luxury Choice - Sketchbook

'I refuse to Retire'

Continued from the Daily Mail And boy did Hulanicki change the landscape with Biba, the forerunner of today's High Street chain stores. It's ironic that Barbara, who wears a 'school uniform' of black, is the woman who got the uptight Brits wearing prints, leopard skin, feather boas and glitter. She made shopping a social event and launched the first-ever mail-order fashion catalogue. But most importantly she created designs an emerging female working class could afford. Along with Mary Quant she put the mini skirt on the map, though Biba's famous micro-mini was the result of a mistake. The cotton jersey they used shrank. 'You needed to let the material rest before sending it into manufacturing so that you cut it properly, but once our manufacturers didn't do this. We hung the skirts up in store and when we returned the next morning found they had shrunk dramatically!' Barbara went home feeling sick, saying, 'We're bust, this is the end; all these skirts barely cover a girl's crotch.' But then husband Stephen Fitz-Simon, whom she married when she was 25 and who helped run the business, rang to say customers were running out of the store with the bandage-style skirts still shrinking in their hands! With her ash blonde bob, black T-shirt, trousers, skinny jacket, and ubiquitous dark glasses, Hulanicki looks decades younger than 81. Married for 36 years with one son, she lost Fitz-Simon, whom she calls Fitz, to cancer in 1997, and now lives alone in a converted Twenties apartment in Miami. She is smart, funny and self-deprecating, the sort of woman you'd like to sink a martini with. She fizzes with energy, throwing her arms around as she chats. She's excited to be one of the Sixties trailblazers celebrated in Michael Caine's new film My Generation. Made to mark his 85th birthday, the documentary sees Caine travel back in time to Sixties London to talk to icons including Barbara, Paul McCartney, Twiggy, David Bailey, Mary Quant, The Stones and David Hockney. The film features unseen archive material — images of Carnaby Street, Piccadilly Circus, gritty South London where Caine grew up, and Barbara's famous 'Big Biba' shop on Kensington High Street, which drew more than a million visitors a year. 'It's amazing footage,' Barbara marvels. In the film, Caine explores why his generation — born in the Thirties and Forties — was so successful. They were hardly born with a silver spoon in their mouth, living through a world war and rationing. Many of the Swinging Generation came from working class families. (Caine grew up on the Heygate council estate in South London; Barbara arrived as a Polish-born refugee in England in 1948). But what united them was a spirit of rebellion. Between them they revolutionised fashion, music, acting and art. To be young, smart and in your 20s in London in the early Sixties was a gift, Barbara recalls. 'Everybody had a job, they came in and rented bedsits in places like Kensington and Notting Hill.' She adds: 'They were in little rooms, sharing bathrooms. I always remember Fitz saying: 'Ok our clothes have to be £3, because women earn £9 a week; £3 on food, £3 on rent and £3 for a Biba dress.' ' Unlike their parents, they weren't afraid of their social betters. They demanded change. 'You were considered a rebel over the most stupid things,' Barbara says. 'Wearing black was a rebellion, you only wore it for funerals. And no one wore purple. So obviously black and purple became Biba's big colours.' What's so fascinating is that most of the Swinging Generation still work full time in their 80s. Hockney is producing new work for major exhibitions worldwide. Caine has four new films this year. The Stones in their mid-70s are touring this summer. And Barbara has no intention of retiring. She designs wallpaper for Graham & Brown and there's a new fashion collection coming out with King's Road boutique, Baar & Bass, (fans include the Duchess of Cambridge and Princess Eugenie). Growing up in a family of strong women (her father died when she was 12), she says she was always a natural feminist. As a consequence Biba was a very female-orientated company. 'They didn't need fancy offices. They were amazing when they worked together, there was no nonsense. If there was a 'drone', you know one of those girls who look amazing, but do f*** all, they would get rid of her themselves.' If anything, she says, Caine's film doesn't show how strong women were. 'I'm sorry Mr Caine,' she jokes. 'But the girls who came to London were toughies. Fitz was absolutely terrified of them. His office was next to the changing room and he'd hear them describing what they'd been doing and say: 'I can't take it.' 'Barbara was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1936, the eldest of three girls. The family relocated to Jerusalem in 1936 when her father, Witold, was made the Polish Consular General there. After the fall of Poland in 1939, he remained in Palestine, working with the British Mandate authorities during World War II. As a diplomat's family they were wealthy, but Jerusalem had no shops, so her mother had to make their clothes and cosmetics. But then tragedy struck. When Barbara was 12, just months before the formation of the Israeli state, her father was abducted and shot by a Zionist paramilitary group, who were fighting to rid Palestine of the British. 'I can't talk about it without getting very upset.' Her mother went to pieces. They lost everything but were rescued by her mother's wealthy, older half-sister, Aunt Sophie, who lived at London's Ritz hotel. 'She said: 'I'm so sorry I can't afford to put you up at the Ritz. We're all going to have slum it in Brighton.' Slum it! It was six suites along the sea front,' she roars. 'So we had a roof over our head, but there wasn't food and drink like people are used to now. We could not believe the rations — in 1948 there was one egg a week, 2oz of cheese. Have you ever seen 2oz of cheese?' she marvels. 'That's why people were skinny, goodness me.' Sophie wanted Barbara to go to Oxford. But her niece, who had been making her own clothes since she was 16, insisted on studying fashion illustration at Brighton Art College. Her family considered Barbara embarrassing. It was only when, in her early 20s, she met her husband, advertising executive Fitz-Simon, at a party, that she found her partner in crime. 'He was amazing, he said: 'Just stop listening to them all yapping at you. Everybody's wrong and you're right.' I said: 'Ok, we'll try that,' ' she says dryly. In 1964 she and Fitz started a mail-order business, but weren't doing terribly well until fashion editor Felicity Green (the first woman to make associate editor on Fleet Street) asked her to design a dress for readers inspired by Brigitte Bardot. Barbara came up with a pink gingham dress with a round hole in the back and a head scarf, priced 25 shillings (£3 today). It came in one size — 8 — and attracted 17,000 orders, enabling her to start her own boutique. Biba was her younger sister Biruta's nickname. They needed a name in a rush and tried it out on a few friends. Is her sister proud to have a legendary store named after her? 'She said it was hell — still does.' Their first shop was a former chemist's shop in a Kensington side street, with sofas for the boyfriends to sit on and approachable staff — unlike the snooty 'madam shops'. It soon became associated with TV music show Ready, Steady, Go — the producer would send Cilla and Sandie Shaw there to get dressed. The shop was a dressing up box, with girls wriggling into mini dresses. Every piece sold out as soon as it hit the shelf. Barbara then launched a mail-order fashion catalogue — Helmut Newton took the photographs — so women outside London could buy her designs. The Biba aesthetic, with its art-nouveaux meets art deco look, was inspired by old Hollywood — Dietrich, Garbo, American musicals. Barbara would also recreate boas, silks, and sequined skull caps, all inspired by Aunt Sophie's Thirties aesthetic. Touchingly the seven guinea Biba pinstripe suit — their first real sales success — was inspired by her father. The last time she saw him, he was wearing a pinstripe suit. Age 30 she had her son Witold (named after her father). Ever style-conscious she designed black Biba nappies for him. In 1966 they moved to a site on Kensington Church Street and Biba became the epicentre of cool. According to her friend Twiggy, 'She changed fashion in England singlehanded.' Members of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Kinks frequently dropped in. 'The girls were so blasé about the men who came in to flirt with them — I mean genuinely blasé. 'Twiggy used to pop into my shop in Brighton every Saturday and I used to think 'Who is that beautiful skinny girl?' She was a real privilege to get to know. 'And the boys went on to become famous musicians of course. Then people like Sonny and Cher would come in and I would turn to Fitz and say 'Who are these weirdos?! But I love their trousers!' ' As business boomed they opened Big Biba, a six-storey art deco building (now M&S) overlooking High Street Kensington, in 1973. It became London's second biggest tourist destination after the Tower of London and sold cosmetics, homewares, menswear, cat food, even Baked Beans. Time magazine called it 'the most 'in' shop for gear'. Hulanicki's aunt still referred to it as Barbara's junk shop. The store was decorated with mirrored pillars, peacock feathers and faux Tiffany lamps. On the top floor was the Rainbow Room restaurant and nightclub. Barbara designed the space as a castle with a moat and live flamingos and penguins frolicked in the rooftop garden. But the party only lasted a few years. In 1975 Biba went bust after expanding too quickly and had to sell 75 per cent of its shares to Dorothy Perkins. After disagreements with the board over creative control, and a failed buyout by British Land in 1976, Hulanicki and Fitz walked away with little. But the Sixties generation are great survivors. The couple moved to Brazil with their son, then eight, and started a new shop in Sao Paulo. She stayed, creating T-shirts for hip Seventies labels Cacharel and Fiorucci, until in 1987 Ronnie Wood asked her to design a hotel for him in Miami. She's lived there ever since. For the Baar & Bass collection, out in April, she has created five Seventies-inspired sketches for limited-edition pieces — including a Twiggy top, Jerry jumpsuit and Jagger maxi dress. 'Barbara's work ethic is amazing,' says the boutique's owner Maddy Chesterton. But then Barbara's mantra is 'If I rest, I rust'. Paint, re-do your house, make mistakes, and keep working, she insists. 'What would I do if I retire?' she scoffs. 'The gardening?!' My Generation is in cinemas March 14 with a live Q&A with Michael Caine, broadcast from BFI Southbank. The film is out March 16 2018 .

If I could see me now

continued from The Telegraph. After school my aunt wanted me to go to Oxford, but I wanted to go to art school, which she grumbled about. Yet I have to thank her now for educating me in the history of fashion. All those ideas were digested and came out of a young head in a rebellious way. From my career, I wanted freedom. I loved black because it was a “no-no” colour. Only widows wore black. But it was my rebel colour, and I still wear it now. Before starting Biba, I had a big career in fashion, going to all the shows, which I thought were so boring. At the time there was a huge gap between children and their parents, who were almost Victorian in their values. There was no freedom at all. Although now we have too much! I was 23 when Fitz [Stephen Fitz-Simon, Hulanicki’s husband who died of cancer in 1997] asked my mother for my hand in marriage. She said, “Are you sure? She’s very old”. He was only three months younger. Still, at Biba we were considered terribly old because everyone else was 16. We were considered to be Mum and Dad. The store became very associated with Ready, Steady, Go, the first music programme of its kind. The producer would send everyone down to us to get dressed: Cilla, Sandie, the girls and boys. It was exciting, but also very scary from a business point of view. I was responsible for production and I would be sweating all the time. Pattern cutting was a nightmare, things wouldn’t come out the way you thought they would. Fashion today just keeps going around to the same things from 50 years ago. It’s a bit bonkers at the moment but it always goes back to Biba after they’ve gone so stupid. There’s only so much you can do with a woman’s body anyway that looks nice. I don’t think I’ve changed over the years – I like to hide behind my glasses – I think you just get wiser. I often think, “oh no, not again”.My younger self would be pleased I haven’t stopped working. It’s important to stay creative. People don’t realise that painting and drawing makes you terribly high. It’s incredible. You’re floating half the time. The key to staying young is to go draw. Re-do your house, make mistakes, and keep working.